PAKISTAN: MUSHARRAF ACCUSED OF DISCLOSING STATE SECRETS

Islamabad, Lahore, 27 Sept. (AKI/DAWN) - Major opposition parties on Tuesday lashed out at President Gen Pervez Musharraf, saying he used national resources for the launch of his book and disclosed state secrets to increase its sale. Commenting on 'In the Line of Fire' launched in the US on Monday, a spokesman for former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said Gen Musharraf seemed to have decided to make some money, realising that his 'political demise' was near.

In a statement mailed to Dawn from London, spokesman Nadir Chaudhri described the book as anti-Pakistan and a pack of lies aimed at rewriting history.

He said the general had made personal attacks on Sharif and lied about the Kargil disaster and the ‘illegal coup’ he mounted to overthrow a democratically elected government in 1999.

He said the Pakistan Muslim League (N) would soon give a comprehensive and befitting reply to Gen Musharraf’s ‘lies’ about these issues.

The spokesman condemned what he called the maligning of Dr A.Q. Khan and said it was reprehensible and unprecedented that an army chief had presented such a negative image of Pakistan.

He said the only motive could be his desire to rake in as much money as he could which was understandable given the fact that he presides over “the most corrupt regime in South Asian history”.

Chaudhri said the general’s ‘sorry explanation’ for his post-9/11 decision to take a U-turn on Afghanistan had exposed his decision-making process as seriously limited, flawed and defeatist that had led to the present gloom in Pakistan.

PML-N’s acting parliamentary leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan at a news conference in Islamabad alleged that Gen Musharraf had made false claims about the Kargil operation only to gain publicity.

He said the general’s revelation that the US had paid millions of dollars to Pakistan for capturing Al Qaeda operatives had come as a humiliation for the country.

Under the law, he pointed out, the US could not give the prize money to any government or the institution. He asked Gen Musharraf to tell the nation where the money had gone.

The PML-N leader said that being a public servant Gen Musharraf could not write a book and disclose state secrets.

He said the joint opposition would discuss if it should take Gen Musharraf to court.

Khan claimed that at a meeting held in the Governor’s House at Lahore during the Kargil operation Gen Musharraf had told the Cabinet Committee on Defence that the army was in great trouble at Kargil. The then air chief and the naval chief had expressed reservations over the Kargil situation and complained that they had not been taken into confidence before the launching of the operation.

PML-N information secretary Ahsan Iqbal said the general had written his own FIR in the book which was a charge-sheet against himself.

PPP spokesman and former senator Farhatullah Babar said the book had raised the ‘moral and political’ question whether a sitting army chief and president should take public positions on national policy issues and whether he should spend public funds for promoting his book.

“It has set a new and dangerous precedent for the chiefs of air force and navy to also record their memoirs while in service and then take official jets to set out on tour to Europe and America on promotional campaigns,” he said, adding that Gen Musharraf’s visit to the US along with a dozen ministers was less for promoting national interests and more for boosting the sale of his book.

At best, he said, the book is a one-sided version of critical events namely nuclear proliferation, war on terror, the Kargil conflict and the Oct 12, 1999 military takeover.

The book might have boosted Gen Musharraf’s financial standing but it had neither served the cause of truth nor the interests of the country, Babar said.

Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s deputy parliamentary leader in the National Assembly Hafiz Hussain Ahmed regretted that Gen Musharraf had revealed certain army secrets, besides narrating the incidents of his ‘cowardice’.

He said Gen Musharraf had been claiming for five years that Pakistan’s decision to support the war on terror was a principled stand, but now he said it was because of the US threats.

Referring to claims in the book about Dr A.Q. Khan’s role in proliferation, the MMA leader said Gen Musharraf had, in fact, tried to ‘bail out’ some generals and other influential people involved in nuclear proliferation. He said Gen Musharraf had disclosed several crucial matters which had never been brought before parliament despite opposition’s demands.